Roxane Gay - Ayiti

[Haitis] better scribes, among them Edwidge Danticat, Franketienne, Madison Smartt Bell, Lyonel Trouillot, and Marie Vieux Chauvet, have produced some of the best literature in the world. Add to their ranks Roxane Gay, a bright and shining star. Ayiti is an exciting new chapter in an old and beautiful story.

Kyle Minor, author of In the Devils Territory

These are powerful stories written with verve and theres this great sense at the collections close that nothing will stop the Haitian people, the human spirit, or Roxane Gay.

Ethel Rohan, author of The Weight of Him

A set of brief, tart stories mostly set amid the Haitian-American community and circling around themes of violation, abuse, and heartbreak This book set the tone that still characterizes much of Gays writing: clean, unaffected, allowing the (often furious) emotions to rise naturally out of calm, declarative sentences. That gives her briefest stories a punch even when they come in at two pages or fewer, sketching out the challenges of assimilation in terms of accents, meals, or What You Need to Know About a Haitian Woman. This debut amply contains the righteous energy that drives all her work.

Kirkus Reviews

Theres a distinct echo of Angela Carter or Helen Oyeyemi at play; dark fables and twisted morality tales sit alongside the contemporary and the realistic.

Los Angeles Times

Gays signature dry wit and piercing psychological depth make every story mesmerizingly unusual and simply unforgettable.

Harpers Bazaar

Writing that seems to cut to the bone.

Seattle Times

Like Joyce Carol Oates Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? or Shirley Jacksons We Have Always Lived in the Castle, this is fiction pressed through a sieve, leaving only the canniest truths behind Addictive, moving and risk-taking.

San Francisco Chronicle

Roxane Gay charges from the gate These are the places Im going to take you, Gay seems to be saying. Are you prepared?

Globe and Mail (Canada)

Roxane Gay is a force.

Rumpus

[Gays] goodness cuts to the quick of human experience. Her work returns again and again to issues of power, the body, desire, trauma, survival, truth.

Brooklyn Magazine

F ICTION

An Untamed State

Difficult Women

N ONFICTION

Bad Feminist: Essays

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

Copyright 2011, 2018 by Roxane Gay

Cover design by Becca Fox Design
Cover art Lyn-Hui Ong

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or .

Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America

This book set in 12 pt. Warnock Pro
by Alpha Design & Composition of Pittsfield, NH

First published by Artistically Declined Press: October 2011
First Grove Atlantic edition: June 2018

ISBN 978-0-8021-2826-3
eISBN 978-0-8021-6573-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data
is available for this title.

Grove Press
an imprint of Grove Atlantic
154 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

groveatlantic.com

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For my mother and father

G rard spends his days thinking about the many reasons he hates America that include but are not limited to the people, the weather, especially the cold, and having to drive everywhere and having to go to school every day. He is fourteen. He hates lots of things.

On the first day of school, as he and his classmates introduce themselves, Grard stands, says his name, quickly sits back down, and stares at his desk, which he hates. You have such an interesting accent, the teacher coos. Where are you from? He looks up. He is irritated. Haiti, he says. The teacher smiles widely. Say something in French. Grard complies. Je te dteste, he says. The teacher claps excitedly. She doesnt speak French.

Word spreads through school quickly and soon, Grard has a nickname. His classmates call him HBO. It is several weeks until he understands what that means.

Grard lives with his parents in a two-bedroom apartment. He shares his room with his sister and their cousin Edy. They do not have cable television, but Edy, who has been in the States for several months longer than Grard, lies and tells him that HBO is Home Box Office, a TV channel that shows Bruce Willis movies. Grard hates that they dont have cable but loves Bruce Willis. He is proud of his nickname. When the kids at school call him HBO, he replies, Yippee-ki-yay.

Grards father does not shower every day because he has yet to become accustomed to indoor plumbing. Instead, he performs his ablutions each morning at the bathroom sink and reserves the luxury of a shower for weekends. Sometimes, Grard sits on the edge of the bathtub and watches his father because it reminds him of home. He has the routine memorizedhis father splashes his armpits with water, then lathers with soap, then rinses, then draws a damp washcloth across his chest, the back of his neck, behind his ears. His father excuses Grard, then washes between his thighs. He finishes his routine by washing his face and brushing his teeth. Then he goes to work. Back home, he was a journalist. In the States, he slices meat at a deli counter for eight hours a day and pretends not to speak English fluently.

In the second month of school, Grard finds a bag of cheap colognes in his locker. For HBO is written on the front of the bag in large block letters. It is a strange gift, he thinks, and he hates the way the bag smells but he takes it home. Edy rolls his eyes when Grard shows his cousin his gift, but takes one of the bottles of cologne. His girlfriend will enjoy it. Those motherfuckers, Edy says. He is far more skilled at cursing in English. Then Edy explains what HBO means. Grard clenches his fists. He decides that he hates each and every motherfucker he goes to school with. The next morning, he applies cologne so liberally that it makes his classmates eyes water.

When they call him HBO, he adds a little something extra to his yippee-ki-yay.

H e knows its there. He knows its thick, thicker even than my mothers. Hes been on American soil for nearly thirty years, but his voice sounds like Port-au-Prince, the crowded streets, the blaring horns, the smell of grilled meat and roasting corn, the heat, thick and still.

In his voice, we hear him climbing coconut trees, gripping the trunk with his bare feet and sandy legs, cutting coconuts down with a dull machete. We hear him dancing to konpa, the palm of one hand resting against his belly, his other hand raised high in the air as he rocks his hips from side to side. We hear him telling us about Toussaint LOuverture and Henri Christophe and the pride of being first free black. We hear the taste of bitterness when he watches the news from home or calls those left behind.